In an examination of elementary school children's notions of reading, 1,122 first through sixth graders were individually interviewed. Each child was asked to define reading, and their responses were placed into four categories: those which were vague or irrelevant, those which focused on classroom procedure or the educational value of reading, those which focused on decoding or word recognition, and those which focused on meaning or understanding. Responses which fell into the first category were ignored and only the responses which fell into one of the remaining categories were analyzed. Of this group, the majority of students gave responses which fell into the second or third categories, implying that to them reading was a classroom procedure or a decoding process. Very few responses fell into the fourth category, indicating that most students were not able to associate meaning with reading. The results suggest that teachers should not assume that instruction in reading is necessarily instruction in comprehension. Direct comprehension instruction is needed to make reading sensible for children, and teachers must provide it. (FL)